Partner Showcase — Carbon
We recently had the opportunity to talk to Emeka Mordi, Head, SME Finance & COO, Carbon. He shared his thoughts about the company, digital identity, and the effects of COVID19 pandemic.
Headquartered in Lagos, Carbon provides instant loans, credit records, investment, bills, payments and personal financial management tools for the Nigerian market.
- What led to the birth of Carbon, and how has the journey being so far?
The company was founded in 2012 as Paylater and rebranded to Carbon in 2019, reflecting how the scope of the business had grown. The founders believed there was a huge gap in financial services being provided for individuals and businesses by the traditional banks. The average Nigerian’s access to collateral, specifically, was way too difficult.
They believed that even though many Nigerians had bank accounts, they were underbanked, which gave them little incentive to use financial products. This idea led to the creation of an unsecured loan product which was a first in Nigeria, and the rest is history.
Carbon has changed the financial services landscape for individuals and businesses and continues to lead through innovation and putting the customer first. Between 2017 and present-day, Carbon has disbursed over N55bn in unsecured loans to individuals and has recently launched a bouquet of services for SMEs which includes unsecured loans, overdraft and cheap transfers.
2. What role would you say digital identity plays in the innovation happening in SMEs lending in Nigeria?
Digital identity plays a particularly important role as it allows service providers to deploy services and create products that meet the needs of SMEs and not just for lending alone. If you do not know whom you are addressing, it becomes exceedingly challenging to create cohorts and design products and services to meet their needs.
3. Due to COVID, creating seamless digital experiences has taken the front seat for businesses around the world. How have you been able to manage this new normal? **
Carbon’s platforms have been built on digitisation and automation from day one, so we were very well positioned for the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have always believed that individuals and business owners have more important things to do than standing in line for hours to be attended to. For the most part, a business can upload all the documents required to achieve a successful application on our platform without having to speak to a single human being. Our human touch is focused on customer support to help resolve issues as there are glitches from time to time.
4. What are the major challenges for Carbon regarding identity in Nigeria?
The challenges are the same for all businesses who need to verify any identity.
Trust!
Can you trust that the information an individual or company provides is accurate enough for you to make business decisions?
5. What circumstances led to you choosing VerifyMe as your identity verification partner?
We have a statutory requirement to verify the addresses of businesses that come to take a loan from us. We needed a partner that would meet our demanding turn-around requirements.
We look for the best third-party service providers to work with, and VerifyMe was the most responsive and appeared to have the capacity to meet our demands.
VerifyMe, like Carbon, is also technology-driven, so there is a synergy in what we are trying to achieve. The goal of bringing easy to access identity verification to businesses is also a big deal and something that no one has been able to crack. VerifyMe is showing ambition and grit which we are traits we admire.
6. If you could change one thing about the identity space in Nigeria, what will it be?
If we could change one thing about the identity space in Nigeria, it would be to harmonise all the different identity platforms and give everyone a base level to work from.
In the US, it is the social security number. In the UK, it is your national insurance number. Every single Nigerian should have a unique number that can be trusted.
For businesses, especially SMEs, the process of acquiring an identity, the CAC’s RC number, should be simple and straightforward. You should not be able to claim to be a business and use your personal details to do business. I think harmonisation would go a long way. However, there is a myriad of issues we must deal with, but identity is a great place to start.
